IS THE BSE AGENT ACTUALLY DERIVED FROM SH EEP

The rendering plants in the USA use the same technique as those in Bri tain. It is customary to mix meat and bone meal with the concentrates fed to cattle and well known that scrapie is widely occurring in the U SA. But not one case of BSE has been reported. In trials where-by mate rial from scrapie sheep has been inoculated into cattle, central nervo us symptoms developed but they were not identical to those of BSE. Fur thermore, it was found that the BSE strain is a uniform one whereas st rains with different properties are known to exist in scrapie. English veterinarians claim to having observed BSE already before the disease was recognised as a specific entity. It may therefore be assumed that the BSE agent is a true bovine prion. If there exists a familial form of BSE as is known from Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease in men then only a pre-BSE stage would be reached in the United Kingdom after the slaught er of all cattle older than thirty months. There is of course no dange r that a new wave of BSE will occur because meat and bone meal is not fed anymore to cattle.